


Steps

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:06:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Step one: lose your parents and world at the age of ten.  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Step two: lose your father and world again at the age of twenty-two.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steps

**Author's Note:**

> In case the summary didn't tip you off, this is a super, super angsty fic.

Step one: lose your parents and world at the age of ten. 

Step two: lose your father and world again at the age of twenty-two. Specifically, your father blows himself up to _clear a path for you_. 

Step three: go to the room of the boy that you grew up with and thought you loved for a two week period in Manila when you were nineteen and he was eighteen. His father finds you there, sorting through press binders provided so that Chuck could prep for interviews. Every Jaeger pilot got them. How many of them kept their binders? Chuck was always an egotistical shit, his father says, standing in the doorway. You look over and see him standing there, arm in a sling. Both of you laugh, and he sits down on the mattress next to you and looks at clippings with you. 

Hercules Hansen was your father's best friend. 

Step four: have sex with your dead father's best friend. Does it seem unlikely? Imagine how sad and angry and frightened and frustrated you would have to be for that to happen. How unlike the self that you present to Raleigh Becket, how unlike the self that you ever showed to Stacker Pentecost, even when you were broken down to your constituent parts: the only person that you could be this ugly with was the boy you loved for two weeks in Manila. He was just as ugly back to you. _You're a goddamn disgrace._ Also: _bitches on a leash_. That was on the mild end of what the two of you used to say to each other. 

So. Whatever that place is, you are there, Mako Mori, and here his father is, sitting next to you. There are tears standing in your eyes, and you turn to your side and kiss him. His pinned-up arm is between the two of you, and after a moment of kissing, it's clear that he is in that same black, ugly place of the heart. Is that hard to imagine? Listening to your only child call you his _father_ , then hit the trigger for a million-ton payload is hard to hear. You end up braced against Chuck's old dresser, knees as far apart as the drawer pulls, getting fucked from behind. He grips you at the shoulder with his good hand, and you spread your legs wider. You wish you could feel his rough hands on more of you, and when he raises the hand at your shoulder for a moment, you turn your head and pull two of his fingers into your mouth, two knuckles in. When the tip of your tongue touches his palm, he makes a desperate noise and pushes all the way into you. 

Actually, you come before he does. 

Step five: do it again a week later after having a hideous fight with Raleigh Becket. You are working close to twenty-hour days, trying to coordinate the orderly shutdown of the Shatterdome -- no more kaiju, no more funding from Hannibal Chau. In hour twenty-one, you have a hideous, vicious fight with Raleigh. In hour twenty-one and a half, when you are supposed to be getting in a car to go to some kind of banquet that the governing class of Hong Kong, SAR, is throwing for the saviors of humanity, you find yourself down on a maintenance bay, looking out at where Striker Eureka used to stand. Twenty short days ago, you'd been sitting in a nearby bay with Raleigh, feeling alive and almost euphoric. In love.

Marshal Hansen shows up. He is surprised to see you there; his arm is still in a sling, and you turn around. He is not going to this banquet. You were, which is why you're in a black dress and three inch heels. 

"Here," you say, and you set down the bottle of Scotch you were carrying, and from the way that he looks from it to your face, you know he recognizes it from _sensei's_ desk.

The two of you sit and drink until the bottle is empty. You are one of the lucky fraction of East Asians who do have the alcohol-processing gene, and Hansen shows you a strip of pictures that he found in his son's things -- not from the two weeks when you thought you were in love with Chuck, but instead, from when the two of you were thirteen. Some kind of photo booth. Possibly in Lima? You don't remember. Chuck looks happy. You look sullen. This would not surprise anyone who had to deal with the two of you in 2016. 

When you look up, Hercules Hansen is staring out at the empty space. 

This time, you're on top. 

Step six: it isn't just the loss of your _sensei_ , who saved you once from the kaiju and again from the orphanage when none of your surviving family wanted you. It absolutely is not because of the boy you always thought you would pilot a Jaeger with. Instead, Mako Mori, in a sense, you've lost your entire world -- again. Everything you have worked for is at an end; everything you have ever wanted will no longer exist, and the grief you feel collides with your good, steady common-sense knowledge that by closing the breach, you've done a good thing. 

Still, the the boy you go home to every night keeps saying that he wants to share the burden. He wants to help, but what can he do? He jockeyed for three years, then went into _construction_. He has no idea how a Shatterdome actually works, let alone one jury-rigged together like Hong Kong. Nevertheless, he tells you, over and over, that he meant what he said in the Conn-Pod. He wants to think about the future. He wants to talk about what the two of you will do: he thinks that just because the two of you have Drifted together, been happy together in the middle of terror and then gone on to save the world, the two of you have an enduring connection. 

Somebody sees you with Marshal Hansen in the maintenance bay, and this person tells five other people, and these five other people tell twenty-five other people. Five hours later, everyone knows, and somehow, somebody gets the courage up to tell Raleigh. 

When the two of you are getting in bed that night, with a voice that sounds more sad than angry, he says that the two of you should talk. You hear him say those words, and you take a deep breath. You let it out again. 

You lie down in bed. You close your eyes, and you try to think of the next step.

**Author's Note:**

> You should go read [this](http://siterlas.tumblr.com/post/58242018464/prdetails-mako-was-different-there-was) instead. The set-up is all siterlas, and most of the good ideas are expressed a lot more eloquently in that. This only good idea in here that isn't 100% siterlas is Mako and Herc getting drunk on Scotch from Stacker's supply, which was destronomics.


End file.
